Image based bar code scanning is a known technique. See, for example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/342,792, filed Dec. 23, 2008, published as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0155484, assigned to the assignee of the present application and incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. Such approaches provide valuable techniques for obtaining images of bar codes on items at checkout at grocery, retail stores and the like. However, the imager employed typically obtains images from the cashier side of a checkout stand and not from the customer side. Thus, if a customer has a bar coded loyalty card, the customer hands the card to the store checkout person or cashier who scans it and then returns it to the customer.
Another and different aspect of checkout is that shoppers often place large or bulky items, such as a large bag of dog food, kitty litter, potatoes, a twelve pack of soda or the like on the bottom rack of the traditional shopping cart which is designed to support such items. However, when checking out customers rapidly, the bottom of the cart items can be missed, or alternatively may require a time consuming process to be scanned. As one alternative, the large bulky items must be boosted to the checkout surface and scanned. As another alternative, the service person may need to come around the customer side and scan the item or items with a handheld scanner.
It is also known to capture a video feed of the vicinity of a checkout station. See, for example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/835,578, filed Aug. 8, 2007, published as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0039165, assigned to the assignee of the present application and incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. This approach employs a separate camera to capture the video feed.